People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1896 — COERCION AND INTIMIDATION. [ARTICLE]

COERCION AND INTIMIDATION.

Corporations and Other Large Employers of Labor Outraging Manhood. This campaign will be known in history as the campaign of coercion, in which the great corporations and large employers of labor asserted their right to control the votes as well as the time of their employes, and assumed to have purchased their manhood along with their labor. Subsequent history will tell how the croporations failed in the attempt and how they themselves suffered for having forgotten, for the time, that they are the creatures and servants, and not the masters, of the people. In a speech during his recent tour through Indiana Mr. Bryan thus spoke on this subject: “I have heard that in some of the cities in Indiana the employers have notified their employes that they would not open up business if I was elected. Now, my friends, if you will look at the charters granted to those corporations you will find that in not a single case have the laws of Indiana authorized the organizations of corporations for the purpose of running the politics of the state. (Applause.) If you will examine the powers granted by law you will find that there is not a single Instance where the laws have granted to the corporations the right to intimidate their employes in any way whatever, and I assert that a corporation that assumes the right to intimidate Its employes has no right to exist in a land like ours. (Applause and cheering.) Corporations were instituted for business purposes and not for political purposes. (Applause.) My friends, when corporations tell their employes that they will not open up if a certain candidate is elected, you want to remember this, that colorations are willing to attend to business when there is any business to attend to, and If railroad shops close down it is because there Is no business on the railroads, that there Is no work for the railroad shops, and that the railroad shops will cease when the railroad business falls off, and we assert that if the people as a whole are not prosperous, if the farmers have to stop raising products to give the railroads business, then the men will not have anything to do. The restoration of bimetallism will not hurt any legitimate business. The election of the Chicago ticket will help legitimate business. (Applause.) It only interferes with the man who wants to eat the bread that somebody else has earned.” (Applause.) It is no excuse the corporations that they are themselves, in many instances, coerced by their bondholders or by banks and capitalists to whom they owe money. The coercion of voters is an outrage on manhood and a violation of law. Every such outrage suggests a remedy, and the people, through their legislative bodies, will not be slow to find a remedy for this particular outrage.